The Week 07Feb2020

Best columns: Europe NEWS 15

FRANCE

The Michelin Guide has demoted the father of

nouvelle cuisine, said La Dépêche du Midi, and

France “is in mourning.” L’Auberge du Pont de

Collonges, the Lyon restaurant that chef Paul

Bocuse ran from 1965 until his death in 2018,

bore the coveted top rating of three Michelin stars

for a record 55 years. But in the latest edition of

the prestigious Michelin Guide, out this week,

the restaurant has been demoted to a mere two

stars, an act of violence that tears at “our Gallic,

banquet-loving souls.” One chef protested that

it was as if “the pope had been dethroned,” and

ordinary citizens are questioning the nation’s place

in global gastronomy. Bocuse was the “St. Paul

of truffles and lobster,” a towering figure who

trained countless top chefs during his decades in

the kitchen. And his restaurant remains a theater

of fine dining, with its heavy chandeliers and

white tablecloths, a place to “taste and recite the

poetry of flavor again and again.” If Bocuse were

alive today, Michelin would not have dared to

cross him. Many critics say that Michelin is merely

trying to stem a plunge in sales of its guide by

chasing controversy. In the words of the great food

columnist Périco Légasse, “The Michelin Guide

has committed suicide, long live Paul Bocuse!”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has admitted

he inhaled, said Miriam Lord, and now that’s

all the press wants to talk about. Varadkar, the

41-year-old head of the Fine Gael party, is up

for re-election next month, and at a televised de-

bate last week, he and his main rival were asked

whether they had ever taken illegal drugs. Varad-

kar’s rival, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin,

smugly barked, “Never.” There was then a “pain-

fully long pause” before Varadkar stammered,

“Yes...but it was obviously a long time ago.” We

already know this about Varadkar. The prime

minister told an interviewer in 2011 that he “did

a bit” of weed in college. Yet the press won’t let

it go: “When did you stop taking drugs? What

exactly did you take? How much? What are you

hiding?” It’s obvious that reporters are chasing

an easy high. “Manifestos and policy papers are

boring,” and it’s hard to parse analyses of how the

various parties will respond to Ireland’s coming

challenges, including Brexit, climate change, and

the housing crisis. How relaxing, instead, to take a

deep drag of manufactured scandal. “Does anyone

really give a flying fumbally whether Varadkar

smoked, popped, snorted, swallowed, imbibed, or

sniffed?” He’s been our prime minister since 2017.

Let’s judge him on his record, not on whether he

toked in his teenage years.

Re

ute

rs

The 75th anniversary of the libera-

tion of Ausch witz should have been

a moment for solemn reflection,

said Sabine Müller in Ger many’s

Tagesschau .de. But when dozens

of world leaders gathered in Israel

last week to commemorate the ar-

rival of the So viet army at the Nazi

death camp, they used the occasion

to grandstand and squabble. Ger man

Pres i dent Frank- Walter Stein meier, at

least, said all the right things. Speak-

ing at the Yad Vashem memorial in

Jeru sa lem, Stein meier said Ger many

took full responsibility for the “indus-

trial mass murder of 6 million Jews” in the Holocaust—1 million

of whom died at Ausch witz. “I wish I could say that we Ger mans

have learned from history once and for all,” Stein meier said, add-

ing that he couldn’t, because anti-Semitism is again on the rise.

Last Oc to ber, an armed neo-Nazi tried to storm a synagogue in

the eastern city of Halle, killing two people when he couldn’t

gain entry. “The perpetrators are not the same,” Stein meier said,

“but it is the same evil.” These were worthy words, unlike those

spoken by Israeli Prime Min i ster Ben ja min Ne tan yahu, who “hi-

jacked the commemoration” for political ends. He urged world

leaders to unite against his arch-enemy, Iran, calling Teh ran “the

most anti- Semitic regime on the planet.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin used his speech to wage “in-

formation warfare,” said Edwin Bendyk in Polityka (Poland).

He began spreading lies in the weeks before the anniversary,

absurdly suggesting that Poland was responsible for starting

World War II—and glossing over the

deal that Stalin struck with Hitler

in August 1939 to carve up Poland.

In his Yad Vashem speech, Putin

didn’t mention Poland by name but

claimed that the Nazis wouldn’t

have been able to build death camps

without the cooperation of local

people. Auschwitz is located in Po-

land; “the allusion is clear.” Poland’s

President Andrzej Duda, meanwhile,

wasn’t even at the Israeli event, hav-

ing boycotted out of pique that Putin

got to speak while he did not. Duda

left a statement insisting that Poland

was a victim of the Holocaust, not a perpetrator.

Both Putin and Duda demonstrate precisely the wrong way to

think about the Holocaust, said Andreas Breitenstein in the

Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland): “nationalizing it to im-

munize one’s country against attacks.” All European societies

must look within to understand how the state apparatus can

be mobilized for the purpose of genocide. Every year, there are

fewer Holocaust survivors left to bear firsthand witness, and

“there is growing concern that sooner or later the Shoah will fall

into oblivion.” That’s why we must require all young Germans

to visit a former Nazi concentration camp before graduating

high school, said Rune Weichert in Stern (Germany). One in five

Germans thinks we place too much emphasis on the Holocaust.

Those that are “physically confronted” with the crime, though,

come away understanding that Auschwitz is not about history,

but about preventing an evil future.

The cowardly

slaying of a

culinary lion

Editorial

La Dépêche du Midi

IRELAND

Survivors mark 75 years since Auschwitz’s liberation.

Miriam Lord

The Irish Times

Auschwitz: Playing politics with a Holocaust memorial

Who cares if

the premier

got high?